Multiplatform Journalist, Pigeon Toed Runner

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Monthly Archives: April 2013

As this semester has progressed, I have provided you all (oh my fellow followers) with some valuable insight on ways to write for online and how to format your work and brand in order to get yourself and all of your work noticed. But, you may be asking yourself “WWWD?!” “What would Wilson do? What would he be looking at on the internet when he should be writing his paper or latest class blog post. Well, here are a few sites that I turn to when I am online.

A fellow multiplatform Journalist/experienced blogger

The first site I’m going to give you is called The Works of Drew Tewksbury, a multimedia journalist who has actually named his domain after himself. Drew constantly updates his site with reviews and up to date content of movies, music, books, and television shows. What I like about his site is that he gives you the content you want to know like “What is that song from that movie when they are in that one scene?” Well Drew writes about it! His homepage is easy to navigate and he even has Sound Cloud up on his website to allow music to play while you are searching his home page. He is a great writer that gives you raw and edgy new content about things you actually care about, especially if you are interested in different mediums.

News that doesn’t always make top of the list

When I’m looking for the latest information about what is going on around the world, say in recent events such as the Boston tragedy, one of the places I go to for more feature based stories that actually have an interesting approach is Poynter. Poynter is an online newsroom and journalism institute from the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg campus that is dedicated to “teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders”, as it says in its mission statement. Their home page has links to their latest stories, ways to sign up for their online webinars and seminars, and some of their top blogs that they support. Poynter is a great source of reliable and credible information that allows you to read and obtain breaking news from a website that most don’t visit or know exist.

My ultimate haven for online information and news

So when I am in full swing procrastination using the internet, I always find myself on Runner’s World getting tips and reviews on training plans, nutrition, the latest shoes and gadgets, race reviews, and, most recently, information and ways of dealing with the running world tragedy in Boston. Runner’s World is not just an online website, but also a magazine that has countless avid subscribers and readers. It has its feature stories at the top, with editorials and columns by a variety of top, noteworthy running icons, and other things that are easy to find AND things you want to find. Not to mention, the best part about Runner’s World, is that every writer on the site/magazine…is ACTUALLY a runner. You don’t know how helpful and truthful this helps make a lot of the things you do online more worthwhile.

Read on my fellow followers, and don’t be afraid to have your own unique and different way of spending your time online. Not everyone can read the latest gossip website, some people need to be nerds/freaks in their own specialty.

This is the video that my partner and I made for our Multiplatform journalism class at Saint Louis University. It is an promotional video for the new major and Undergraduate program, Emergency Management, currently ranked 2nd in the nation having just started in the fall of 2012. Visit http://www.slu.edu for more information and watch the video to hear about the components of an Emergency Manager and an Emergency Management degree.

Think back to the time you first started using the internet. You would go to a search engine and type in the most random things and see what popped up. Then, you got this assignment where you had to write a paper or give a presentation about a topic you know slim to nothing about. While it may have been fine when you were really young to get information from the internet, now it is not the same. Everything you post, or re-post, on the interwebs will be subject to copyright, re-sharing, and available for everyone to see and trace back to you.

Here are five easy ways to not get sued for the things you post online:

Be yourself. Everybody knows that when you use somebody else’s work and take the credit for it as your own, you are going to get in trouble sooner or later. It will start out small but then you will be in a world of trouble. Be original.

Don’t publish anything that harms any person, group or organization’s reputation or greatly upsets them. If so, you can get into big legal trouble and could even get sued for libel. It’s a big deal, so don’t take this lightly.

If you publish something about someone else, they need to know about it. Whether this is true or false information, the person has to give some form of consent. No one wants to be sued for “publishing private facts,” as the ending is never pretty.

Know the legal lingo and the ins and outs of Copyright. These are two great ways to explain licenses and what copyright is and entails in order to most effectively allow you to use shared work and for others to share your work. This helps you and helps them!

Know that you have to be open to all paths and sources. Everything that you do can be subject to question your integrity and your loyalty, both to yourself and the product(s) you write about. You need to be as honest as possible when writing and doing things online. Trust me, they can find out if you are lying.